Filip Chodzewicz

William S. Burroughs (1914-1997)

FORMED IN THE STANCE

The beautiful disease and
The government falls
along the weed rooms
flesh along the weed government/ / / /
The girls eat morning
Dying peoples to a white bone monkey
in the Winter sun
touching tree of the house. $$$$
Argue second time around such a deal.
The middle artist unknown and probably hostile
in his hands scouting be obligation
for force main body dependant
on in from ate………
The usual procedure
viruses graphed
Time.
Ours THAT????
HER feet at?
Morning
the thunderous
read the front page” ” ” ”
star blazing
but She
read the stories
beyond lines. . . .
They can
take over
viruses &&&
make one
The Scientists
formed in the stance. . .
traits
ride
many. . .
thorough
equipped
street
few days:::

Octavio Paz (1914-1998)

Summit and Gravity

  
There's a motionless tree
And another one coming forward
                                                         A river of trees
Hits my chest
                        The green surge
Is good fortune
You are dressed in red
                                      You are
The seal of the scorched year
The carnal firebrand
                                   The star fruit
In you like sun
                           The hour rests
Above an abyss of clarities
The height is clouded by birds
Their beaks construct the night
Their wings carry the day
Planted in the crest of light
Between firmness and vertigo
                 You are
         Transparent balance

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

Simplicity

 

It opens, the gate to the garden

with the docility of a page

that frequent devotion questions

and inside, my gaze

has no need to fix on objects

that already exist, exact, in memory.

I know the customs and souls

and that dialect of allusions

that every human gathering goes weaving.

I’ve no need to speak

nor claim false privilege;

they know me well who surround me here,

know well my afflictions and weakness.

This is to reach the highest thing,

that Heaven perhaps will grant us:

not admiration or victory

but simply to be accepted

as part of an undeniable Reality,

like stones and trees.

Emil Nolde

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

"I Said to Love"

I said to Love,
"It is not now as in old days
When men adored thee and thy ways
   All else above;
Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the One
Who spread a heaven beneath the sun,"
   I said to Love.

   I said to him,
"We now know more of thee than then;
We were but weak in judgment when,
   With hearts abrim,
We clamoured thee that thou would'st please
Inflict on us thine agonies,"
   I said to him.

   I said to Love,
"Thou art not young, thou art not fair,
No faery darts, no cherub air,
   Nor swan, nor dove
Are thine; but features pitiless,
And iron daggers of distress,"
   I said to Love.

   "Depart then, Love! . . .
- Man's race shall end, dost threaten thou?
The age to come the man of now
   Know nothing of? -
We fear not such a threat from thee;
We are too old in apathy!
Mankind shall cease.--So let it be,"
   I said to Love.

 

Thomas Hardy :

Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)

A Requiem For Bartok

A Requiem for Bartok

Viola Concerto
which he never finished
poor and broke in New York
as so many were and still are
he died

there was no dirge
no elegy
no requiem
for a true artist
has no true friend

they called him a genius
a great artist
they even finished writing
his last testament
his Viola Concerto

but nobody knew him
he was alone
in his Hungarian solitude

nobody sang
a dirge
an elegy
not even a requiem
for him

one early spring night
in a Colorado town
far away from New York
I saw a woman on the stage
in the shadow of his light
let her viola sing
what cannot be sung
alone in the midst of the clamor
of symphonic chaos

people sat still
like silent tomb stones
just listened
vacant eyes

she was playing a loving requiem
for Bartok

Bob Marley (1945-1981)

“Who are you to judge the life I live?
I know I'm not perfect
-and I don't live to be-
but before you start pointing fingers...
make sure you hands are clean!”
― Bob Marley

Naguib Mahfouz

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

Lao Tzu

Melvyn Grant

Wole Soyinka

I Think It Rains

I think it rains
That tongues may loosen from the parch
Uncleave roof-tops of
the mouth, hang
Heavy with knowledge

I saw it raise
The sudden cloud, from ashes.
Settling
They joined in a ring of
grey; within,
The circling spirit.

O it must rain
These closures on the mind, blinding us
In strange despairs, teaching
Purity of sadness.

And how it beats
Skeined transperencies on wings
Of our desires, searing dark longings
In cruel baptisms.

Rain-reeds, practised in
The grace of yielding, yet unbending
From afar, this, your conjugation with my earth
Bares crounching rocks.

 

Wole Soyinka :

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

 

Pablo Neruda :

Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996)

A Polar Explorer

All the huskies are eaten. There is no space
left in the diary, And the beads of quick
words scatter over his spouse's sepia-shaded face
adding the date in question like a mole to her lovely cheek.
Next, the snapshot of his sister. He doesn't spare his kin:
what's been reached is the highest possible latitude!
And, like the silk stocking of a burlesque half-nude
queen, it climbs up his thigh: gangrene.

 

Joseph Brodsky :

Hossein Zare

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

 

Langston Hughes :

Robert Pinsky

To Television

Not a "window on the world"
But as we call you,
A box a tube

Terrarium of dreams and wonders.
Coffer of shades, ordained
Cotillion of phosphors
Or liquid crystal

Homey miracle, tub
Of acquiescence, vein of defiance.
Your patron in the pantheon would be Hermes

Raster dance,
Quick one, little thief, escort
Of the dying and comfort of the sick,

In a blue glow my father and little sister sat
Snuggled in one chair watching you
Their wife and mother was sick in the head
I scorned you and them as I scorned so much

Now I like you best in a hotel room,
Maybe minutes
Before I have to face an audience: behind
The doors of the armoire, box
Within a box--Tom & Jerry, or also brilliant
And reassuring, Oprah Winfrey.

Thank you, for I watched, I watched
Sid Caesar speaking French and Japanese not
Through knowledge but imagination,
His quickness, and Thank You, I watched live
Jackie Robinson stealing

Home, the image--O strung shell--enduring
Fleeter than light like these words we
Remember in, they too winged
At the helmet and ankles.

 

Robert Pinsky :

Ian Daniels

Milton Acorn (1923-1986)

The Island

Milton Acorn
From:   The Island Means Minago. Toronto: NC Press, 1975. p.13.

Since I'm Island-born home's as precise
as if a mumbly old carpenter,
shoulder-straps crossed wrong,
laid it out, refigured
to the last three-eighths of shingle.

Nowhere that plowcut worms
heal themselves in red loam;
spruces squat, skirts in sand
or the stones of a river rattle its dark
tunnel under the elms,
is there a spot not measured by hands;
no direction I couldn't walk
to the wave-lined edge of home.

Quiet shores -- beaches that roar
but walk two thousand paces and the sea
becomes an odd shining
glimpse among the jeweled
zigzag low hills. Any wonder
your eyelashes are wings
to fly your look both in and out?
In the coves of the land all things are discussed.

In the ranged jaws of the Gulf,
a red tongue.
Indians say a musical God
took up his brush and painted it,
named it in His own language
"The Island".

Bruce Cockburn

RUTHIE'S TIRED THING

Here	The dark on which I feed
You	The red room where I cannot reach your blood

In the ring,
   in the cuckoo,
   in the tick at the wall
         slow

   vision buzzes in time
   with darkness patterns
   and those of light
   that seek

this electric beehive where I live.